A mid-life common sense health and wellness journey to examine, evaluate, and choose our ideal path — by eating Paleo, exercising daily, and using herbal based remedies — to ensure we are around to enjoy our retirement and future family.

Menu

About Us…

“One Year To Wellness” is our mid-life common sense health and wellness journey to examine, evaluate, and choose our ideal path — by eating Paleo, exercising daily, and using herbal based remedies — to ensure we are around to enjoy our retirement and future family.

Roy and Tracy (August 2013)

Roy and Tracy have been happily married for 27 years, have two grown daughters, a new son-in-law, a potential son-in-law, and are entering their empty nest years.

Roy, 55, enjoyed a 26-year adventure as an US Navy officer and recently left his second career working for a big government contractor to start his own consulting business. With a new job and outlook on life, he is ready for a new journey – a journey to find health and wellness!

Tracy, 51, has served as military wife, mother, household record keeper, costume creator, volunteer, artist, chef and long ago (before children) teacher, business marketing director, small business owner and professional dancer. She is ready for a new journey – a journey to find health and wellness!

2013 has been a year of highs and lows, which has caused us to rely on our faith to make it through both periods. The year started off with a downsizing to a smaller house; because it was just the two of us, we no longer need a large family home. In the winter, Tracy had a hysterectomy, and needed the full six weeks of recovery. However, she was back in the swing of things just in time to attend our oldest daughter’s college (University of Alabama) graduation and plan for her wedding – on the SAME Saturday. June was supposed to include a big family vacation to Costa Rica, but Roy came down with an infection that landed him in the hospital twice and required two months of IV antibiotics for him to recover. Our youngest daughter came home from college with a myriad of digestive issues. We spent the summer taking her to medical appointments, which resolved nothing, By talking to a herbalist, we discovered a gluten-free diet with no sugar or dairy might help her feel better. She went back to college this fall with these eating restrictions, thankfully, her college cafeteria has been wonderful in providing meals that she can tolerate and taste good. We did make one trip this year and to see our new son-in-law commission as an officer in the US Navy! Most recently, we helped our daughter and her new husband pack up and move away, to start their own naval adventure.

Finally things have quieted down and while our overall health is good, our overall wellness is not so good – in fact we feel terrible – overweight, achy, sluggish, foggy-brained and tired! Becoming empty nesters is supposed to be a rewarding time in married life — full of fun and doing all those things you put off while raising your children. BUT, here we are here, just the two of us, with no energy to enjoy life to the fullest. We believe that mid-life has got to be is better than this!

Roy always told our daughters “life is full of choices.” Thankfully, near the end of 2012 we made a few choices that helped get us through this year and helped start our journey to health and wellness. The first was learning about herbal-based medicines by taking some courses on creating an herbal medicine cabinet, how to use natural remedies in place of over the counter drugs, and how to use food as our medicine. The second was beginning to use filtered, good, clean water for drinking and cooking. I know these sounds like simple things, but the impact they have had on us has been measurable. Now our challenge is to continue making even more choices toward health and wellness. We feel focusing on food and exercise is the next step to bring balance into our lives.

Our goal is to spend one year (November 2013 – November 2014) documenting our wellness journey – what we eat, how we exercise, and the natural remedies we use. We will spend our time researching and evaluating a full spectrum of “health and wellness” options to make positive and informed choices for ourselves. We will document our research and provide “no-nonsense” and “practical” assessments that can be used by busy people, just like us. We invite others on similar paths of health and wellness to join us in a dialogue that will benefit everyone. We truly believe better health and wellness in mid-life is achievable! And to tell the truth, we are starting this journey and making these changes now, to ensure we are around when our children start having children of their own.